Album: Wendo Kolosoy

Despite tracks come from three periods: the Seventies, the Nineties, and 2004 (the last time the 82-year-old Congolese singer recorded), this is a remarkable cohesive album which actually benefits from each song having its own hermetically sealed ambience. What brings everything together is the gentle insistence of the rumba rhythm, which no one's ever done better than Wendo. From the opener (a re-recording of his 1948 hit "Marie-Louise") it shuffles and shimmies along with only the occasional interjection of a swaggering trumpet solo to pull you out of that floating-down-river trance.